THIRD CLASS PlLGRlMS

GOOD deal of fuss has been made one way and A another about the Catholic Association’s Christ- ma5 pilgrimage to Rome; vivid pictures were drawn of the horrors of third-class continental trains, espe- cially at night : the idea of staying in Rome at anything but an hotel was supposed to be particularly revolting : while even the Association itself thought it necessary to print in heavy type a warning extract from the Bull Indictio Universalis /ubiZaei urging pilgrims to accept discomforts in a spirit of penitence.

Quite apart from the fact that, once a man has made up his mind to visit St. Peter, nothing will stop him, these vaticinators might have kept their breath for their prayers. There were no hardships; and of dis- comforts, no more than any healthy man or woman, to say nothing of a pilgrim, would regard as an amusing novelty. A pilgrimage is not necessarily and in se a penitential undertaking ; contemporary English cus- tom makes of it rather a comfortable conducted tour ; the Catholic Association at Christmas hit the mean, so that their 380 representatives of Great Britain and Ireland, having the right spirit, found the right condi- tions and could call themselves pilgrims without an incredulous grin.

There were no hardships-but there was heroism, for not all the travellers were young and strong. There were many old folk and some in bad health, to whom hard seats and full carriages and sleepless nights were far more than a mere passing irksomeness. Their patience and devotion are to be remembered with humility, rather than to be written about with ful- someness.

It has been said that this pilgrimage was democratic. I t is a pity to impart political catchwords into Christian

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worship; rather say simply that it was Catholic and that accordingly the poor in purse and the low in station were represented in greater proportion, far greater proportion, than is usual in English pilgrim- ages to Rome. Nor did there seem to be any difficul- ties of close intercourse between those of us who aspirated and those of us who did not : if there was any such difficulty, it did not survive the Santa Marta hospice in whose dormitories, whether they held four or forty, there was no distinction except of sex.

All the Catholic Association’s arrangements were good, but the housing of us at Santa Marta was the best. No situation could be more convenient, for it adjoins the sacristy of St. Peter’s, and its very appear- ance, the cool passages, broad stone staircases, white curtained beds, bare wooden tables, spoke of decency and holiness-an effect I have not noticed in any hotel. And there were other privileges which no hotel could have given us : the Blessed Sacrament in Its chapel ; the presence of pilgrims of other nationalities- Austrian, Italian, French ; the ministrations of the nuns; the meals in big refectories, where excellent food was put at the end of each long table and we waited on one another.

Whatever individual and personal intentions there may have been, there is no question that the pil- grimage collectively was a whole-hearted and single- minded act of homage to the Holy See; and this act we were enabled to make superlatively well, better than we could have imagined, much less hoped for. All that we were allowed to expect was a possible audience : and the first thing we were told on arriving in Rome at about I I p.m. on December 2znd was that we must be up at 6.30 for the Pope’s Mass.

A very great deal, perhaps too much, has been written about the splendour of papal functions. If anyone went to that Mass expecting a ‘ show,’ he was

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disappointed; but he assisted at something far better and grander than could be imagined-Mass said by the Parish Priest of Christendom in the presence of some two thousand of his people, of many nations. Six candles, a bugia-bearer and a book-bearer in addition to the usual server, and the episcopal formula of blessing were all the differences from a low Mass in their own parish church that an inexpert eye and ear could detect; even the ‘prayers after Mass’ just as usual and in the vernacular-but the vernacular of the whole Western Church. In fact, each one of us heard in his own tongue.

And in the evening of that first day, the Father sent for his English children, the last audience of the Holy Year. W e passed up the Scala Regia in single file, under the lifted corner of a huge curtain, across the Sala Regale (passing a ragged woman and her three children wandering about-is it thus in royal palaces?), into the Sala Ducale : a big double hall, its walls and roof painted, school-benches all around, a simple throne under a crimson canopy at the far end, with four of the Swiss in attendance. The women were seated on the benches and the men drawn up in two.rows down the middle of the room, and so we waited for an hour, perhaps an hour and a half. I heard no complaint or impatience : the general attitude was that ‘ if we cannot wait patiently for His Holiness, for whom can we ? ’ Everything was easy and natural ; we talked and laughed and moved about far more freely than most of us would have done in a ‘West E n d ’ drawing room. From time to time, personages of fine manners and finer attire came to see that we were properly dressed-and now that we were all to- gether in review order it was obvious how absolutely necessary and riqht the Vatican dress regulations are. One whispered in my ear that if women wore decent black gowns and mantillas at home we should hear less

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of their difficulties in getting husbands. I t was well spoken.

When he had separately and severally blessed each one of us (which he did as if we were the h s t and not the last of hundreds of thousands), the Holy Father seated himself, and we all gathered round, close up, for all the world like a big family of children about to be talked to by their father. And he talked to us in Italian for about twenty minutes, slowly, clearly, crisply, with a pause at the end of each sentence, so that anyone with two words of French, three of Latin, and a quick ear, could follow the substance of what he said. His words may have been ‘ common form,’ but they came quite freshly, and their burden was that of a parent’s solicitude-the plenitude of the apostolic blessing on us and our families, our relatives, our friends, our homes and our work. For the benefit of those who picture the Vatican as a place of formalisin and dull etiquette, let me record that our noisy cheers disturbed no one’s ideas of seemliness.

If we met him ‘a t home’ on this evening, on the next day we were to see the Vicar of Christ regnant, at the closing of the Holy Door. But here again pre- conceived notions of Petrine pomps were happily shattered. What could be more simple, fitting and understood by all than a procession up the nave, blessings with the Greater Relics, the Apostolic Benediction, and the return of the procession for the short ceremony at the Door? Certainly it was a mar- vellous procession. Swiss Guards, whose famous uniform appears to be made of the humblest material ; the Palatine Guard, absurdly reminiscent of pictures in the IlIusZrated London News of 1870-7 I and splen- didly unmilitary : sixty abbots, bishops and patriarchs in white mitres and chasubles of an unpretentious sort, such as might have been ordered by the dozen from the Roman Burns and Oates : half as many members

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of the Sacred College: the episcopal mitre and the papal tiara: the patriarchal cross, its Figure turned backward : and then he for whom alone we were there. In the past I have twice been asked if 1 could imagine Jesus Christ in the sedia gestatoria. And now I can answer sincerely that I can ; that I can hardly imagine Him anywhere else; that it is His place, above the heads of men but near enough to be touched and spoken to.

English people are supposed to be shocked at first by the shouting and applause in St. Peter’s. Those around me suffered from no such inhibition. Fifty thousand voices and as many pairs of hands greeted the Vicegerent of God : if we knew no oth‘er Italian, we had learned Evviva il Papa: and for us English pilgrims in particular it was a shout of gratitude and reparation.

Early on Christmas morning, with Mass being said at every altar and priests lined up to await their turn in the sacristy, St. Peter’s was a vastly different sight, but I was able to kill for my own satisfaction one more superstition about Rome. In a large side-chapel I came upon the canons of the basilica singing office. Who has not heard stories of familiarity bordering on irreverence ?-of snuff -taking, lounging, chattering, while paid singers perform. I saw no such things. Certainly their deportment was not that of, say, a choir of Solesmes monks; they were very much at their ease in Zion: but who have a better right so to be? And their singing of the psalms, rotundo voce, was a music fitting the massiveness of their surround- ings; assisted, too, by several lay people who were zealously exercising their right of taking part in the Church’s liturgy.

The last English pilgrims undertook‘ their pil- grimage to give homage to the Father of all Christians and to gain the Jubilee Indulgence in the way he

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had directed. They did it ‘ third-class ’ because that was in accordance with their state of life : they could afford no more, many of them could not afford even that. They went in a spirit of poverty, expecting much discomfort, little consideration, no privilege. And they had their reward. Kindness, consideration, attention and welcome were given them on all hands. Not only were humble hopes realised: high dreams were fulfilled; they had taken the lower place, and at every turn they heard the invitation, ‘Friend, go up higher.’

I t has already been called ‘ an historic pilgrimage,’ and that for several good reasons ; but the best possible reason will be if it was only the first of many such third- class pilgrimages.

DONALD ATTWATER.

ECCE NOVA FACZO OMNZA

God ave three gifts to simple man Wnd they were very good,

Stone for a house, Iron for a plough, For warmth and comfort Wood.

Man stoned with Stones his fellow man, With Iron his warhorse shod;

And Wood he took to make a Cross And on it nailed his God.

Three gifts by sinful man defiled Jesus our Lord found good,

Who, bound to Stone, by Iron was pierced And saved us on the Rood.

MARGARET S WINSTEAD.

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